The War You Don't See.
 

I watched this last night and I was thinking about it all night. For anyone who hasn't seen this it is concerned with the manipulation of the masses by media in collusion with governments and their effects on the population in relation to distorted information given about wars and events overseas. I highly recommend that you see it. Our eyes need to be opened to see the horrible effects of the current wars and what our media tells us and more importantly, what they don't tell us.













Any thoughts?

Why not to believe everything in the news, or at the very least always consider their bias...
Also why Wikileaks is so important :)

Exactly Tsmukan. :D
I hope Assange walks free of all charges..Not sure what has been happening in the last few months though.
Anyway, I think it is really important that most people, especially the American public see this documentary. Their media is a lot more censored and flavoured then the media in other countries. Overall though, we need to all do our own research so we can have a good idea of what goes on around us. ;)

the military in the first video, was like '' this families are not a humans! ''

I know. >.< It's really sad that innocent people get caught up in a military invasion. In the documentary an American soldier said that in the incident with the Apache helicopter, a girl and her brother were critically injured in a car with their father who died hunched over them protectively. He tried to rescue the kids and send a transport to get the kids to the hospital but the troops and commander wouldn't have it.

John Perkins' books ("Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", "Hoodwinked") detail how the USA starts conflicts overseas so that it appears that they had nothing to do with them.

Interesting. Luckilly someone always seems to find out.

IMO Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are both heroes, and both deserve Nobel Peace Prizes. If only the global military-industrial-media-corporate-complex didn't exist...

Welcome to Aldous Huxley's world, everyone.

Very true.

"The public is a threat."

Now for some reason, I love that.

I did not find any of this really to be new or shocking. Censorship has been prevalent for hundreds of years in the media, and the government are the ones who pressure them to say certain things. I agree, Wikileaks is the most significant thing to happen so far this century.

The most saddening thing to me is how much we invest in finding ways to kill each other. Imagine if these resources were applied elsewhere. Even so, there is no way to avoid war, and world peace is a neat idea but can never happen (my original reason for getting PAD, actually. The timing was just too good with seeing a near perfect world in comparison to our own).

As much as I can understand your point of view, I can't help but feel strong vibes of negative confirmation bias here. Anyone can go and nitpick sources claiming a single viewpoint. That said be suspicious of my viewpoint too. I live next to an air force base, my family is employed there, and as a result I probably have much different outlook on the war.

**** happens in war, mistakes happen, but to paint the entire thing as being some conspiracy goes a bit too far. Weapons of mass destruction or not, Saddam should have been toppled anyways in my opinion. Now don't get me wrong, I think that George Bush handled the war and international foreign policy badly (especially his unilateral policies) but the degree to which the war is painted as being black is ridiculous.

If a war is started we have to go through with it and finish it. To pull out in the middle would only make the situation worse. I find it hard to believe that we are the cause of all this sectarian violence. Toppling Saddam was the catalyst for it but in power vacuum like that, many were trying to grab the reigns of power. To just leave right after Saddam was toppled would still have resulted in massive waves of violence among different ethnicities and factions with the eventual establishment of another dictatorship to take its place especially if you use history as a guide. If everyone thinks we're going to pull out, it only encourages those who are interested in grabbing power for themselves because they know that they will get a chance soon.

If we pulled out right after Saddam was stoppled, there would probably be a post here somewhere of a similar nature blaming us of how we abandoned Iraq and let it rot. Its not an situation with an easy solution.

Not sure how to respond to this, I'm sure you're replying to Maelstrom.
One thing though: What do you mean by the the war as being painted as being black?

That is to say being totally negative. It is quite a grey area in many regards.

Maybe thats not what everyone is claiming but I can't help but get that feeling from what I read sometimes.

No problem. :) I think we find it a lot easier to criticise our governments now then before, only natural due to our increasing access to resources, ie Wikileaks or find out both sides of a conflict. We are only seen to be negative towards the dominant view of things such as the Government. That doesn't have to be a bad thing. :D

Well, I suppose we're just ordinary animals. We fight for territory, loved ones, resources...
Only thing is, we kill each other in worse ways then most predators.

Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a lot more access to government dirty laundry than ever before. Now is the time of true government transparency, and I couldn't be happier.

This was posted on alternet today, might be relevant here. IMO part of the problem is the "our way or no way" approach America takes with international politics. If a leader of another country is not pro-America, we feel a need to dips them in favor of someone who is. This isn't really something you see in therest of the developed world. Other countries accept that they are not the center of the world, and realize that it is inevitable that some leaders won't like them.

What Will It Take to End Our Destructive, Pointless Wars? | World | AlterNet

Also relevant is Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech, I'd look it up but I'm on my phone right now. Really is telling about how much military might costs in comparison to other goods and services.

EDIT. Back home, here it is. :)

Believe me, I wasn't against Desert Storm or any war the US entered really. I LIKE studying war history, and I'm quite good at it. World War II was always significant to me because of all my grandparents being in it as well as the fact that it was labeled as "the only good war." We entered WWII to stop the dictators, and we're still doing that today. Saddam Hussein needed to be removed, I totally agree with that. I was picking more at the lies that are fed to the public to make it happen though.

When the 2008 elections came around and Obama was labeled as the candidate who would pull out of the war, the only thing that I could think and say was that it would never happen. If there was anything that we should have learned from Vietnam it was that pulling out early never yields good results. I don't believe that anyone cares that we attempted to force Iraq into a democracy (at least in the US anyways). The US stands up for its interests or else we can't operate at the level that we do.

Sorry if my post sounded a little anti-military. I have nothing against the military or military families. It just makes me sad to think about how human can't cooperate and that such drastic action is necessary.

Whether or not it is in for the long term does not change the reasons for starting it. While the world would be a much better place if all these dictatorships were replaced with democracies and the undue power religion has over their government removed, it is not an effort for one country - it is something every country should be working towards, assisting the people within those countries who work towards change.

What if Assange and Wikileaks are just pawns in a very clever disinformation game of the US? The BBC posted just a day after the Wikileaks boom, an article about Operation Mincemeat.
What if the CIA detected a mole and decided to let it happen their way: to put information, garbage, information... and so, then wait for the response. It would be a clever way of finding new information around the globe and to reveal potential informants and traitors inside. To legitimate their game, they acted like they should have: A detention warrant was issued for Assange, a person is in prison and the US stated that the information was real... If events happened that way, Assange was the unintentional puppet in a well played game of the US. Besides, no information that Wikileaks revealed has had the effect of an earthquake and now, the whole theme has gone cold.

I wouldn't worry unless other whistleblowers start being locked up.

As for how much Wikileaks has done. No, actually it has had the effect of an earthquake. Wikileaks is one of the main reasons for the blooming of the "Arab Spring" as Al Jazeera is putting it. What spawned the revolution in Tunisia was a bunch of leaks about government corruption, and the other countries spawned from there (though unfortunately the other revolutions aren't going so easily).

I just wish they'd release the bank leaks they were promising, already.

They are waiting for the right moment, I'd say.
Of course, I want to know what is in insurance.aes256, but that won't happen unless things start to really escalate.

:xD: How do you know that? :P

Actually I think most predators do not really do so much bad things to other from their species. They fight for territory, yes (also non predatory animals do that), but usually that is a display of strength and power and intimidation and occasionally a fight, but That they kill each other - I don't know, that seems to happen less often. Of course an animal without territory would eventually starve.

Incidentially this is how it is thought humans handled these conflicts in the prehistory. The "wars" back then were more meant to compare strength and to acknowledge respect of each other. Some people died or were wounded certainly, but that massive wars of today were unthinkable. I even would like to think that there was rarely a clan or tribe wiping another from the face of the earth by killing them. As with other animals though if they are driven from their territory, they either adapt or die. Same with individuals - if they get thrown out of their community, they most likely die.

Modern wars I think are especially cruel because of several things. For once, economic interests play a role and we have strong hierarchical systems. The democracy we think we have is not really one, because the elected politicians are still "leaders" and have to be followed or petitioned. Even if you did not vote Bush, you have to follow his rules. And the economic interests of the military and industry also play a role. As long as people make a lot of $$$ from wars, why should they stop if they do not have to fight themselves and put their own lifes at risk?
Also capitalism has some inherent mechanisms in the economic free market system that requires the destruction of things. Either by natural disasters, by producing things that break easily or by wars. Because only then you can have growth and keep selling things, which is at the base of the current economic system.
And finally the severity of the present wars, the inhumanity of them, I think that comes from the ongoing mechanization not only of machines and technology but also of the humans. We increasingly learn to see the world as inanimate, including other humans. The trees are not living beings but "just trees" and humans are walking bags with a brain. That is overexxagerated of course, but it is a bit what some people think. They call people who work for them "human resources" or civilians dying in conflicts "collateral damage". That speaks of a mechanized view of the world that, despite the claims of following a religion that emphasizes humans as brothers and sisters, leads to things like prison camps, brutal wars and mass murder. And I think to have soldiers that can fly a drone with deadly weapons over Pakistan from ther offices in California just like in a Computer game does not make that kind of situation better. Did you know that in world war I only a tiny fraction of the people actually aimed at their enemy? It's true. In WW II that was already very different and today, the computer probably logs everything and you get cited to your boss if you aimed high.

I can't see any reason for Wikileaks to make us wait for the bank leaks.
And what moment would be the right moment? Isn't that some form of extortion/blackmailing?

People are becoming more fed up with the Wall Street bosses, especially banks (and increasingly oil companies, which Assange also hinted to have dirt on). Maybe he's waiting for anger to hit a certain point, and maybe hoping leaks will push things to critical mass?

Hmmm.

Assange should keep his things under his hat (at least until they decide to publish them). It is not very clever to preach to the entire World that you have information so sensitive that could be a "Thermonuclear bomb" if released. By saying that they have such information, the people affected will certainly take countermeasures that could make things worse, such as covering.

^ I agree, Assange should have a poker face, so to speak before he presents his aces. :)

When they're as good as everyone suspects them to be, there's no reason to hide it :) - you can argue that an attempt at a coverup with it subsequently revealed would be worse for the organisations in question, so they will all just be hoping it doesn't concern them specifically.

Hmm - Wikileaks - I do not know their tactics, but I can imagine that they have a tactic that maximizes impact or even maximizes damage. So to tease banks maybe leads to them making mistakes that people pick up on and then things get unstable and if you set up the big revelation to hit at that time, then you certainly can push things into a different state compared to randomly releasing this. I am not saying that they do plan that, but it would be a possibility...